The present invention generally relates to wireless communication systems, and particularly relates to the reporting of channel information in a wireless communication system.
Channel information (e.g., signal to noise ratio on a particular channel or channel impulse response) helps characterize or otherwise describe a channel between a base station and a mobile terminal in a wireless communication system. If the fixed portion of the wireless communication system has knowledge of the channel characteristics, then the system can make adjustments to improve service. Indeed, the reporting of channel information from many mobile terminals back to base stations generally improves the system-wide performance of wireless communication systems. Further, the emerging multiple transmit antenna/multiple receive antenna systems see some of the most improvement from channel information feedback. It should be noted, however, that the theoretical amount and complexity of channel information that can be fed back increases as the number of transmit and receive antennas increases. Further, because of the time-varying fading environments encountered by mobile terminals, the feedback of channel information from the mobile terminals to the base stations should be timely.